We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies
Featuring footballer's hairdos, a giant chalk crevasse and a stoned man soaking a reporter with an esky.
Each Friday, our contributors send in a bunch of (legally) free stuff they’ve come across this week to help you waste your weekend. You’re welcome.
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Short Film: Practical Uses for Major Works of Modern Cinema, by Zach Clark
Ever stared forlornly at a pile of VHS films that once meant the world to you? Perhaps that well-worn video of Agnes Varda shorts you ordered through a weird mail-order catalogue in the 90s still tickles your pickle but your lack of a working VCR renders it completely useless in your modern, one-bedroom-apartment, no-fuss, keep-it-in-the-cloud lifestyle.
Sound familiar? Wait, don’t box them all up and force your parents to store more of your useless crap in their overflowing garage! US filmmaker Zach Clark (White Reindeer, available on Netflix) has made a short for BAMcinemaFest with lots of good tips for that busted copy of Stranger Than Paradise that you should probably just get on DVD now.
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Album: 2017, by Daif
Recommended by: Doug Wallen (“Five Things You Need To Know About Neil Gaiman’s Brand New Book”)
Settle into some end-of-week synth healing from Daif King. Half of the duo Golden Axe, King also pursues solo work as Daif. His new CD (and name-your-price download) plays like disintegrating New Age: sumptuous synth-strumentals that are glossily beautiful on the surface but coming apart from within.
Like certain other releases on New Zealand’s Crystal Magic micro-label, 2017 could pass for chintzy, royalty-free theme music: check out the twinkling ‘Long Peace’ and the Renaissance-Fair-gone-digital ‘Mellow Man’. These are celestial soundtracks that spill out like artificial office-lobby waterfalls — at once pretty, cheesy and hypnotic.
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3D Street Art: ‘The Crevasse’
Recommended by: Michelle See-Tho (“In Appreciation Of Spot The Dog”)
Watch these people make a scarily lifelike crevasse out of chalk. It was part of the 2009 Festival of World Cultures in Dublin, which stopped running in 2011, but this is a nice little reminder of how amazing street art can be. The artist, Edgar Mueller, drew an icy crevasse on the East Pier of Dún Laoghaire using solid and liquid chalk to make it. Perspective art is always super cool, but this takes it to another level — it forces people to walk around it because it looks so real. Plus the music is fab.
You can see more of Mueller’s stuff here.
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Tumblr: Football Hair Watch
Recommended by: Mel Campbell (“The Failure Of ‘Yves Saint Laurent’, And The Perennial Problem With Creative Biopics”)
With the World Cup in full swing, Football Hair Watch is a celebration of all that is great in footballers’ hair — which, as blogger and screenwriter Pete Mattessi points out, has slightly different criteria to great men’s hair in general. A critical assessment of hair body, shape, texture and volume, plus awe-inspiring uses of dye, shaving and hair product, Football Hair Watch manages to be both seriously celebratory and piss-funny, and you don’t need to follow the beautiful game to admire its beautiful hair.
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Internet: Normal Moments in Art History Where No One is About to Get Murdered, by Mallory Ortberg
If you clicked on ‘Women Ignoring Men as Art‘ in our last Friday Freebies you’ve no doubt developed an itch in need of a scratch. Don’t worry, there is more.
It’s pretty clear at this point that Mallory Ortberg is the funniest and maybe best person on the Internet right now. The thing about her writing is not only that it’s hilarious (though it is), but that she seems devoted to mining a rich vein of high culture nerdiness that similar websites neglect. There’s her series of Two Monks Inventing Things, or her pastiches on Hemingway, Russian literature, and Ayn Rand. She also has a wonderfully mean streak of is-she-joking misandry.
I recommend reading her entire archive, and then doing it again. You will laugh, learn, and maybe also in some small way be enriched as a person.
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Video: Man Throws Esky Of Water On Reporter
Recommended by: Nelson Groom
It’s well acknowledged that journalism is a dangerous trade. That said, one usually expects reporters to face peril in war zones or areas of profound poverty. Yesterday, a video surfaced showing that journalists are not even safe in the mundane burbs of ‘Straya.
The video shows NineMSN reporter Alex Bernhadt attempting to interview a deeply unorthodox character who had reportedly just had his house on the Gold Coast raided by police (they reportedly confiscated weed and a toy grenade). It begins with the suspect saying: “I don’t want to be recorded. You can walk away…I’m going to throw this bucket of water on you.”
Taken aback, Bernhadt asks him “are you?” shortly before the man drenches her with an esky full of water.
Evidently somewhat remorseful, the man then shrugs at the reporter and confesses, “I smoke a little dope.”
The video is yet another testament to the surreal supremacy of the interwebs. Kudos, you strange little man.
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Tumblr: Mad Men Screenshots With Things Drawn On Them
Recommended by: Mel Campbell
I love Mad Men possibly more than Game of Thrones, but because I’ve been recapping the latter, I haven’t been keeping up with the delightful ecosystem of commentary and satire surrounding the former. Last night I checked out this sublime annotated screencap blog and laughed myself silly.
As with many Tumblr blogs, the tags are a rich source of more hilarity. I want to tweet all of them. I want Death-Stare Peggy, or maybe Super-Proud Mentor Don, as my computer desktop. It’s going to be a long wait until the second half of season 7 next year.
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Videos: Luis Suarez Gets The Parody Treatment
Recommended by: Katie Booth (“Those Cheap And Dodgy USB Chargers Can Actually Kill You”)
In case you’re not a fan of the World Cup or missed the backlash, Urugayan foward Luis Suarez took a bite out of an Italian player’s shoulder during a match. So it was only a matter of time before some genius decided to make a parody out of this absurdity. In honour of Suarez and his teeth, YouTube has responded with a whole bunch of parody cuts. Here’s one that’;s fairly innocent:
And here’s one that’s not so much:
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Gallery: Photoshop Shows Beauty Standards Over The World
Recommended by: Elizabeth Flux (“The Team Behind ‘Grace Of Monaco’ Have Made The Worst Possible Film, So You Don’t Have To”)
It’s no big secret that there is no universal definition of ‘beauty’, but now this idea has a face. Journalist and photographer Esther Honig sent out a simple image of herself all over the world asking people to use Photoshop to make her beautiful. While such a small sample cannot remove personal bias, the results are nonetheless weird, baffling and hugely interesting.
While I don’t think this piece can fairly say it represents beauty ideals in different countries, it is still interesting to see the wide-ranging differences of opinion about beauty between different Photoshop artists. Ideals aside, if you want to also witness the wide-ranging differences in talent between Photoshop artists, there is a lot of fodder here for that too.